The Capital Hotel is uniquely beautiful, with its cast-iron façade
and marble lobby, its high-ceilinged rooms, and its rich history.
Since its opening in 1876, it has been the stage for the struggles,
schemes, and dreams of generations of politicians, debutantes, prostitutes,
carpenters, and businessmen. And a wide variety of owners and visionaries
has shaped the hotel's fortunes, among them the Yankee entrepreneur
who started it all; the Italian immigrant family who kept it going
in its worst days; the architect who envisioned new lives for old
buildings; and the financiers and craftsmen who brought the Capital
to its current glory as a luxury hotel. The story of the Capital
Hotel is also the story of Little Rock, and of many American cities:
built in the commercial boom of the 1870s, in full flower at the
turn of the century, battered by the Depression, optimistic in the
postwar era, but decrepit by the late 1960s, then renovated in the
1980s and thriving today. This lavishly illustrated volume traces
the history of the hotel from its origins as a commercial building
to its spectacular renovation into a jewel of downtown Little Rock.

2002
8.5"x11"
224 pages
94 photographs
$34.95 cloth (s)
1-55728-727-9

Steven B. Weintz is a commercial
writer with over twenty-five years of experience with a variety
of book and
magazine publishers. A graduate of Vanderbilt University,
he started his career as a copywriter at an ad agency in
Manhattan, worked for four years in marketing and circulation
at Reader's Digest, and moved to Little Rock in 1987 to help
launch the publishing division of Leisure Arts, now owned
by Southern Progress/Time Warner.